Hugh Beirne - Agricultural graduate of University College Dublin. He has more than 30 years of senior International Management Experience in the agriculture and food sector, including the Masstock Group and the Government Australia. He has been tasked with setting up and managing a variety of commercial agricultural operations in a number of countries including Ireland, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Zambia, Mexico and Romania.

Following on from this he spent a number of years in Australia where he established a joint venture with the Victoria Ministry of Agriculture.

Hugh Beirne - B.Agr.Sc.

Hugh is a graduate of the faculty of Agriculture, University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.

He is an Irish National currently domiciled in Romania.

He has more than thirty years experience working in the areas of food and agriculture in a variety of countries Worldwide. Among the projects Hugh has worked on has been to the establishment of a technical services division for the Masstock Smart Farming /Al Marai group in Saudi Arabia. This required the establishment of state of the art laboratory facilities as well as an integrated crop and animal diagnostic and nutrition service. This was a hands on service, working with farmers and agronomic advisers in the field.

Hugh and his colleagues were instrumental in identify the acquisition target Cleanacres in the UK which now trades as Masstock Smart Farming UK a division of Origin Enterprises. Masstock UK offers a fully integrated agronomy service to UK arable farmers as well as involvement in Poland and Ukraine.

Following on from this he spent a number of years in Australia where he established a joint venture with the Victoria Ministry of Agriculture to commercialize the services offered by their research facilities and extension personnel.

While returning to Ireland Hugh took on the responsibility of developing a food ingredient business based on growing paprika and marigolds in Zambia. This involved the drying and shipping of the products to Mexico for processing into feed ingredients for the poultry industry and their sale worldwide. Among the countries where Hugh traded the natural feed ingredient range were Mexico, Peru, The United States, UK, Spain and Ireland.

A similar operation was set up in Romania; growing, processing and selling paprika based feed ingredients. This required the identification of suitable land and the hiring of qualified farmers and agronomists to produce the crop. This operation has been sold to a UK based agricultural group.